A few days ago we received positive news for lovers of ebooks, at least in a way. This news affirmed the right of the ebook than another format or version of the book with the same rights. Thus, libraries will have to consider it as such and allow the loan of the ebook, something difficult to accept in some countries of the European Union.
But this loan is based under the "one copy, one user" principleTherefore, if the library lends the ebook, no other user will be able to access it until the ebook is returned. This is interesting but it has its problems and conflicts.
The doctrine "one copy, one user" will mark the near future of the ebook in European libraries and in Spanish?
This represents a great advance that has been made thanks to a sentence of the European Court of Justice, but it is also a great injustice to many users. On the one hand, the doctrine «one copy, one user» greatly limits the ebook, leaving many readers without your content for many weeks or even months.
In addition, it also limits the number of copies. While currently many libraries allow the loan of two titles or more, in this case only one title will be allowed, something scarce for some readers, especially for those who have to go to the library to renew the loan or for the librarian to certify the loan, something that unfortunately still happens in these times.
But the interest of this news is not in communicating it but to ask your opinion. While the debate in Europe about the nature of the ebook seems to be closing in in Spain, it seems that it has not even begun. So What do you think? Do you think that one ebook per loan is enough or should more loans per user be allowed? What do you think about the ebook? Do you think it's software or just a different format?
It would be very convenient to explain how digital information is «returned», and how many years in prison it will take to make an unauthorized copy.
Limiting culture for the sake of copyright is like putting cloth covers on monuments in parks and expecting the public to pay to be shown; the idea may seem noble to artists but in practice it is no more than silly. If as a ruler you intend to have an educated population, you have to look for solutions, not to manufacture new forms of crime.
Has anyone ever thought about how many works of art and literature made in ancient times have we come to know or have news only because someone took the trouble to make copies and that only one of the latter survived?
But if we are here, there is another idea (quite absurd) for libraries:
Count the books, as such, only if they are complete, that is, do not hand over the last pages until the rest have been "returned" to you, and until then you will not have loaned the book as such. And that these last pages have a really limited validity.
Like the book club that buys a book and spreads its pages:
The first reader reads the first page and upon completion he passes it on to the next, taking the second page, which at the end he will pass again when the second reader has read the first page and passed it on to the next one… thus forming a human chain of maximum length to that of sheets that the book has, physically quite complicated, but electronically perhaps viable.